Objective
When I was seeking out raw milk for the first time, I could’ve used a tool like GetRawMilk.com.
Useful tooling is the central focus of this project. I’m not your doctor or your health coach, I’m your tech professional and acquisitions (milk) guy. Get Raw Milk’s objective is to streamline the process of consumers becoming raw milk enjoyers by creating tech that facilitates this connection. This is done by making data available and easy to access.
Commitment
1.) Listing a source will always be free.
2.) Finding a source will always be free.
Get Raw Milk’s map represents every place to get raw milk that has come to my attention. The vast majority of this information was offered to me by the community, freely, with the understanding that I would share it freely.
Brief history of GetRawMilk.com
GetRawMilk.com is a bootstrapped web app that connects raw milk consumers with raw milk farmers, retailers, and buyers clubs worldwide.
Before expanding nationally, then globally, the project started in 2018 as Washington Raw Milk and displayed a map of Washington. This seminal map was my own, because I hadn’t thought to share it, plotted with farms and retailers selling raw milk so that I could always find a source while exploring the Northwest. I wrapped it into a website, WashingtonRawMilk.com, and shared it with the community.
Washington Raw Milk dot com was the first visual map dedicated to finding places to buy raw milk online. RealMilk had a phone book type of directory to find raw milk at the time, but not a map you could interact with.
2019, Washington Raw Milk expanded nationwide into Get Raw Milk. Allies in other states were asking for a visual map of their own, so I started including them and seeking out listings across the country. I crawled (by hand, not-automated) all over Facebook and Google to find any and all verified-to-still-exist sources nationwide.
2020, GetRawMilk.com went worldwide and was updated to support searching for raw milk quick results to display your nearest sources. This was the biggest update. I took the ol’ Google MyMap and poured that data into a web app I coded myself to offer some new features.
2022, over 2400 farm and retail sources are plotted in 40 countries worldwide. More people are searching, and it’s never been easier to find raw milk.
2023, added support for light and dark modes. I’ve also created separate filtered maps for cow, goat, sheep, donkey, camel, buffalo, and raw A2 milk covering 47 countries worldwide.
2024, raw milk farm and off-farm listings (retail, grocery, drop locations, buyers clubs, etc) can now reference each other. If a farmer has off-farm locations, you can see where they deliver their milk. In the reverse, when viewing off-farm listings, you can see which farms are bringing milk to that listing. 50 countries are now represented on the map with over 4000 listings worldwide.
Website usage continues to rise, with minimal social media input. I still post random memes to Facebook, project updates and relevant screen caps go to Instagram. Notifications are disabled on my cellular devices, best way to reach me is email: info@getrawmilk.com. Best way to get updates about the project is the newsletter.
GetRawMilk.com will be here to onboard future raw milk consumers as they come.
Extracurriculars
The Raw Milk Law Library is a directory of jurisdictions containing links to raw milk relevant laws, news, articles, and historical information to help us understand where each state stands. The goal was to find links to the letter of the law in each state, so we could read them ourselves, and also report on policy improvements.
LocalFats.com was built in January 2022. Find restaurants, bakeries, breweries, cafes, hot bars, cold bars, and other eateries who prepare food using minimally processed fats instead of seed oils. LF was born during the anti- seed oil wave, the crowd coaxed me into creating the website with a copy-paste of GRM’s code. While dieting isn’t an emphasis in my life, I agree that other cooking oils provide more nutrition, and I always wanted a map of restaurants who select nutrient dense food sources. Cooking oil choice presented a fair-enough data point to structure a restaurant map around, plus the more avid seed oil avoiders were willing to help fill the database, so it just worked.
FindWool.com was built in May 2022. Find makers and manufacturers who produce products made from wool. Haven’t done much with this one, but it’s there.
Behind the keyboard
Connor, 33, Washington 🇺🇸
Web and mobile app developer with 10 years experience building software solutions for lean enterprises, small businesses, and bootstrapped startups. This project was a tool I built for myself, before I knew it would have a life of its own.
My first job was in commercial steel framing (20-gauge steel stud office skeletons in Arizona). I’ve also been a welder (certified ss/alum TIG), custom shower installer, pizza delivery guy, wanderer, and farmworker. Dad was into steel framing, so that was the best summer job I could easily get and I enjoyed it. He also put me in front of his DOS desktop when I was five, and helped me build an XP desktop out of cheap parts from Fry’s Electronics later on, so the possibility of upskilling into app development was deeply rooted.
Food enjoyer. Big fan of dairy foods, independent farmers, and direct-to-consumer sales.
Why I built GetRawMilk.com
Get Raw Milk started as a map for my own use, since no visual maps for finding raw milk existed at the time. I shared it with the state, then the country, then the world, and it grew. There is no business plan here, and I’ve automated away most of the time it takes to run the project and keep it up to date.
Just a few decades ago, America’s reputation for beer was terrible. Europe had the quality beers, not us. America’s craft brewery scene has gone from sparse to rich in that time. I want that same eruption of culture to happen with cheese, butter, and raw milk. We should have the same or better cheese selection than the English and French. We should have the choice of Jersey, Guernsey, Brown Swiss, Saanen, La Mancha, Nubian and more when selecting milk wherever we go.
I also use this web app while traveling, which must be the most common utility for users who come here multiple times per year. Get Raw Milk is dedicated to just that essential part of your journey: finding your local sources of raw dairy products, worldwide.
This sphere of the Web has no shortage of coaches, personal trainers, chefs, and more who might help you decide if raw milk is right for you. I’m just here to make it easy to find raw milk.
What I eat
Normal food, just better ingredients. So how did I get here?
2010, began my dieting/ biohacking exploration. Vegan for 5 months. 2 months good, 3 months bad (stubborn). Raw Primal Diet (Vonderplanitz era) for 18 months, strict, felt great, zero complaints. Volunteered for cream, gravity separated in buckets at Save Your Dairy in Gilbert, AZ. At a potluck in 2012, “am I too good for these beans?” I’m not. By 2014, any desire to rigidly moderate what’s on my plate was gone.
I don’t do dieting. I’ll eat just about anything that anyone else eats and finds tasty. I don’t have it in me to be a picky eater, without some clear and measurable goal. What remains is the basic imperative to source the best quality food available. Being able to find raw milk, or farms and cheese makers, facilitates that necessity.
Raw milk came with me out of that era. Eventually, I wandered off to find my career in stainless steel and aluminum welding, then web and mobile app development.
Got a podcast? Do interviews?
I do my best to field or refer questions that come through email (info@getrawmilk.com) or the contact form. A lot falls through the cracks, and I am genuinely sorry for that.
Running the podcast circuit sounds to me like a repetitious nightmare. Debate’s role in shaping history is overstated. I will post opinions and context in the blog feed, depending on what strikes my interest or appears to be relevant in the greater discourse.
This is a one-guy tech passion project and not “organized” in any traditional sense. The objective is to build and maintain a tool to ensure the availability of raw milk wherever we go, not to build a personal brand or legacy organization. This project contributes code and functionality for this cause.
Got wares? How is this project funded?
I am not above or below hawking some wares, just haven’t spent much time thinking about it. I sell code and technical expertise, anything physical would require more complexity than I have a desire to deal with at the moment.
Shirts are an exception, because they’re printed on-demand by TeeSpring and I touch nothing except the few bucks I get at default pricing. Buy a raw milk shirt to wear the message and send me a few bucks.
Someday I might come up with some value-added product, or custom contraption, or most likely a web or mobile app that I’m willing to sell. Until then, I’m stoked to be running this community-driven project for tips from the milk money page.
Custom web and mobile app development services are also available. If you want to elevate your digital infrastructure, I can provide the experience that built this project to help decide, plan, engineer, and deploy custom apps for your initiative or business.
There are no funding or crypto campaigns associated with this project. Leave a tip.
Email Newsletter
My preferred medium for sharing occasional raw milk and other project-related updates is the newsletter (sign up for emails) and more casually Instagram.
General policy opinion
Few opinions…
Standards for commerce
Raw milk farmers should be able to sell raw milk and raw dairy products to mass distributors under effective and reasonable cleanliness standards.
Labeling should inform customers that this milk, cheese, or butter is an unpasteurized product and that it has not been treated with heat, pressure, or radiation to sanitize microbial life.
Consumers also want to buy raw dairy products through grocery stores and delivery services. This adds points of failure to the distribution process, and consumers want to know their milk is safe. The Raw Milk Institute (RAWMI, not affiliated) provides education to farmers, outlines production and testing standards to make sure raw milk is safe for consumers.
View the map of farms applying the Raw Milk Institute’s methods.
Cottage access to market
Small/ micro/ backyard farmers should be free to produce raw milk and raw dairy products to consumers with no restrictions, beyond basic neighborly considerations.
If your neighbor owns a few cows, a few goats, a few sheep, etc, you should not be prohibited from trading a few bucks for food on a regular basis. No cost-prohibitive regulations should stop an informed transaction of food.
Private Membership Associations
Private Membership Associations should be respected as non-commercial, autonomous, and acting within their rights to determine and grow their foods of choice.
By far, the most diverse farm shop shelves I’ve ever seen have been unregulated and members-only Amish or post-Amish farms. This isn’t going to work at the grocery store, but small-scale anarchy can have some fabulous results.
Bonus
State and local municipalities, possibly through academia, should provide material and educational support to facilitate safe raw milk production for hobby and cottage producers.
